NOT the best zombie movie ever (SPOILERS)

Rating: Null/10 (7 September 2003)

One thing needs to be clarified here:
This was NOT the first film to feature fast, running zombies who act savage and quick (Demons, Day of the Dead, Return of the Living Dead, Braindead, etc.)
That is the general consensus with alot of reviewers here. The novelty of running zombies happened almost 20 years ago. The look of the zombies themselves are impressive, but there isn't enough screen time devoted to them to appreciate the look (the best view of them comes in the second act when one of the captured zombies held by the military struggles to free itself.)
Speaking of the military scenes, this is where the film fails. Instead of an interesting study of the already established characters, one of them is killed off and the rest are captured by an extremist military branch who see the female character as a chance to breed, and the film essentailly becomes a battle for breeding rights, and the lead male for no reason explained turns into Rambo and offs much of the military personnel by himself. An interesting idea to add to the film would have been the regression mentally of the lead character which forces him to turn savage in order to rescue his friends. It would have added made a supposedly "intelligent" film actually look intelligent.
The much heralded "deserted London" scenes deserve all the praise it gets, and Danny Boyle does indeed deserve credit for the way he achieved it. However, if this scene was done with CGI (like the insepid RESIDENT EVIL,) I doubt anyone would care about this scene, which I guess goes to show how jaded have become with CGI that if an effect is acheived without CGI it almost makes the film seem superior.
In summary, 28 DAYS LATER would have been a great film and SHOULD have been a great film if some more character development was added to an already dull group of characters who could have been memorable.